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Category Archives: harvest

Today was a great day. Larry and I did some work in the morning then we got on the road about 11:00 to meet Brandon and Kim (our son and daughter-in-law) for lunch in Santa Rosa. It took us less than 1 1/2 hours to get there. We met at Rosso Pizzeria and Wine Bar. The main purpose for this visit was to give them a hug to congratulate them on their first pregnancy. That means this spring we will become grandparents. We are way too excited about the whole thing! ☺

Anyways, the lunch we had at Rosso’s was great. The four of us shared their Fritto Misto, calamari and green beans fried in arborio rice flour and served with a green chile aioli. This went down really fast. Then we shared two pizzas. One was called Uovo. It has a red base sauce, prosciutto, oven roasted artichokes, olives, Sonoma organic egg and basil. The other pizza was their Funghi. This has a white base sauce with oven roasted shitake and crimini mushrooms, taleggio and fontina cheese, shaved artichokes and fresh thyme. We added cooked prosciutto di parma on top of that one. Both pizza’s were delicious, the crust nice and crunchy on the outside but soft on the inside. We ordered just the right amount of food for the four of us. The meal came to about $12.00 per person. The atmosphere there is great. They have booths around the periphery and tables in the middle. They also offer casual dining outside, but the restaurant is in a shopping center so the view outside are the cars parked in the parking lot. The service was great, the wine list incredible with a great selection of wines from around the world. Each day they have a special that is cooked in the wood oven. Today it was clams. The wine bar is beautiful with a large television in the middle, only showing soccer games. Rosso’s is in the southeast end of town off Third Street. It’s very easy to get to, but if you didn’t know about it you would never see it.

After lunch Larry and I went to go visit Brandon at Dutton Goldfield Winery. There was a lot of action going on there. They were washing and sterilizing brand new French oak barrels and racking them so they will be ready to be filled with the red wines that are in the tanks going through their second fermentation. The interns were putting dry ice into the open top fermenters and covering them which keeps the grapes at a controlled temperature. We took some samples of the chardonnay, pinot blanc, gewürztraminer and pinot noir. Mostly we were tasting grape juice that was just turning into wine, but you can still taste the great different flavors of the grapes with the acids and sugars.

We got home before rush hour and went back to work. Another good travel day to the California Wine Country.